The Searches page helps you move from top-level trends to query-level action. Use it to find the terms that have the biggest impact on click-through rate, no-result rate, and user effort.
Note: Site Search analytics tables and graphs update once per hour.
Prerequisite: Complete Get Started before you use this report, especially the analytics workflow and cookies/session interpretation guidance.
When to Use This Report
Use the Searches report when you need to answer questions such as:
- Which high-volume queries deserve immediate optimization effort.
- Which terms return no results and likely point to content gaps, matching gaps, or both.
- Which queries return results but still produce no clicks.
- Whether changes to synonyms, spell check, ranking, or content are reducing failure patterns.
How to Use the Searches Report
Open Analytics > Searches and select the same app, language, profile, and date range you used at the start.
- Start with the summary statistics to size the opportunity: total searches, click-through rate, average click position, and no-result rate.
- Use Most Popular Searches to prioritize terms with the largest business impact.
- Open Search Details for priority terms to inspect impression and click behavior at the item level.
- Review No Result Searches to classify each term as a content gap, a query-understanding gap, or both.
- Review Searches with No Click to find ranking or intent-alignment issues.
Tip: Treat an asterisk (*) as an empty-search signal in analytics, not automatically as a literal user query.
How to Validate Impact
After you publish a change, compare the same query set over the same date range in this order:
- No Result Searches: Check whether the no-result queries you changed appear less often.
- Searches with No Click: Validate that engagement gaps are narrowing.
- Average Click Position: Confirm that useful results are moving higher.
- Click-Through Rate: Confirm that overall engagement improves.
Cross-check related item performance in Use Content Items to See What Gets Impressions and Clicks when query improvements should change item behavior.
Review schedule: Review this analysis on a regular cadence, such as weekly for active programs and monthly for stable programs. Keep a short change log with the date, owner, target query or feature, and expected outcome. Use the same scope and date ranges each cycle so you can tie metric changes to specific edits.
When to Ask Your Developer or Web Team
Escalate when you need implementation-level detail for tracking fields, empty-query behavior, or screen-level definitions that go beyond marketer workflow guidance. Use Searches as the main technical reference.